Fusion Power Coefficient

Fusion Power Coefficient (or FPC) is the percentage of total power produced to be supplied by fusion generators in any given engine profile, in order to achieve a balanced fuel burn where antimatter and deuterium burn down at equitable rates. The coefficient is different for each class of ship and only applies to ships that house a greater amount of deuterium than antimatter in its fuel stores.

The use of the coefficient only applies when following a Perfect Balance School method to designing your ship's engine load outs. Aficionados of Perfect Balance School claim that this method is best for achieving maximum fuel efficiency. It is most typically used on ships that will be refueled often and are not in use for exploration or long departures from port.

Calculating FPC

The FPC is a constant in engine profiles for any given type of ship. If your class of vessel does not have a known FPC you will need to calculate it yourself. The good news is that the FPC is more or less a constant for every profile and only needs to be calculated once.

First, make a basic engine profile (such as the one below - which is a typical external support setting):

1. To establish the FPC, your fuel reserves will first need to be topped off, or as close to topped off as you can get.

2. Then, simply add some power from fusion generators, and shave some off the main core. Check 'fueltime' regularly to see if you are getting closer to, or further away, from a balance. What you want is something that will give you near equity of burn between antimatter and deuterium. NOTE - it is impossible to achieve or maintain a perfect balance (this is the REAL world, after all, and absolutes are not obtainable).

3. Next is taking the Fusion Power used (6.80213gw) and dividing this by the Power Produced (200gw) to get the ratio. In this case it is .03401065 - which is the FPC for a Lirpa-class.

And that's it! The resultant ratio will hold for every engine profile on your vessel. For example, here's a cruising and cloaking profile that uses the same ratio calculated above. Notice the fueltime is nearly equitable, and even a bit better.

Using the FPC

You can now create any engine profile using the standard method. Once you have all your systems powered how you like them, multiply the "Power Produced" by the FPC to determine the amount of power to set your fusion levels to, and remember to bring down your main engine by the same amount to get rid of any surplus gigawatts.

The formula is:

Fusion Power = X * FPC

'X' = Total Power Produced for the engine profile

Summary

A good engineer should be able to apply both schools of engine profile design. Calculating a proper FPC for your ship is a key tool of any engineer.